Tim Medvetz's trek up Mount Everest — which clocks in at 29,028 feet and is the tallest mountain on Earth — against unbelievable adversity is a testament to that Chinese proverb.

And the Colonia native wouldn't have it any other way.

"The beauty is unbelievable," Medvetz, 35, says of Everest. "When you wake up in your tent and you unzip your vestibule, and you're 27,000 feet up above all the mountains and the clouds are below you — you're on top of the world."

Medvetz's incredible journey, replete with bitter-cold temperatures, frightening winds, severe injuries and even death, is documented in Discovery Channel's new series, "Everest: Beyond the Limit," which airs at 10 p.m. Tuesdays.

The Los Angeles resident, who builds and sells Harley Davidson motorcycles, was all set to scale Everest in the spring. He had signed up for an expedition to traverse the south side of the mountain, which he had been told would be less stressful. But when he couldn't raise all of the money in time, he was kicked out. It was a rather inopportune time, to put it mildly.

"I literally was on a plane en route to Paris, then India, then Kathmandu, Nepal, on a plane with all my gear and not on a team," he explains. On a whim, he contacted experienced expedition leader and New Zealander Russell Brice, whom he'd met previously in Kathmandu. "The next day, I went to the bank and filled my backpack with about 30 million rupees," and met up with Brice.

"(Brice) said, "Welcome to the team, and by the way, Discovery Channel is filming it,' " Medvetz recalls. "It was kind of a fluke."

Unlike Medvetz's original choice, Brice's team was scaling the north side of Everest, which according to Brice's Web site is more challenging but safer because there is no danger of falling ice. The expedition would last nearly two months.

Medvetz's passion for mountain climbing can be traced back about six years, when he read "Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster" by Jon Krakauer at the urging of his girlfriend at the time. A journalist and experienced climber, Krakauer's book documents a 1996 expedition which claimed the lives of eight people.

When his girlfriend asked him what he thought of it, Medvetz says he responded, "One day I'm going to climb it."

Medvetz's mom, Carol, says she never doubted her son's conviction.

"I call him "The Wild Child,' " the South Carolina resident says.

The fact that Medvetz climbed Everest is unusual enough. The fact that he climbed it five years after nearly dying in a motorcycle crash is nearly impossible to fathom.

A second chance

The world will never forget what happened on 9/11. And Medvetz won't forget it either, because that was the day he awoke to learn that he'd miraculously survived a devastating crash with a pickup truck the night before, and had almost lost his left foot to amputation.

"The doctors were telling me "You're not going to walk again,' " Medvetz says. His injuries — and the repairs doctors made to save his shattered body — were extensive: two metal plates in his skull, 10 screws in his left knee, six screws in his foot, a broken finger and a shattered lower back, which was fused together with bolts and a titanium mesh cage.

Medvetz was undaunted.

"After about six months in a wheelchair and recovering, I finally realized I'm going to have to do something — either go back to work or figure out what I'm gonna do," he says. "That's when I just decided ... I'm gonna climb Everest."

About a year after the crash, Medvetz placed all of his belongings in storage, sublet his apartment, flew to Kathmandu, bought climbing equipment and headed for the mountains.

"I lived in the Himalayas for about six months in villages and all around the Everest region," Medvetz explains. "I climbed all the smaller peaks around Everest, just training and preparing for it."

Then he headed back home. The expedition set him back $55,000, which was gobbled up by airfare, climbing equipment, food and incidentals.

"I sold my Harley, sold my truck — everything I had," he says. "If you want something bad enough, you figure out ways to do it."

Cold, hard facts

High-altitude mountain climbing is not for the faint of heart.

Those unfamiliar with the rigors involved might wonder how Medvetz — or anyone, for that matter — has the energy and stamina required to get to the summit. It's a process which involves climbing up to a point and down again, then up to a higher point and down again, in order to acclimate one's body to the thin air.

"The problem with high-altitude climbing is that your body's not meant to survive at that type of altitude," explains Medvetz.

As was evident by the first episode which aired last week, Medvetz's frame — 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds — took a toll on his climbing abilities.

"(My size) is a major, major disadvantage," he admits, explaining that the bigger a person is, the more oxygen their body consumes. "The famous climbers are little guys."

His bionic parts protested, too.

"With all the metal in my body, it slowed me down a lot," he acknowledges. "I don't have the same range of motion as most people. My foot doesn't bend ... I can't move as fast as the rest of the climbers, so every time we would go on a hike to push up to another camp, I was always last man up."

In fact, his inability to reach North Col, a precipitous ridge at 23,000 feet, along with the rest of the team on the first attempt appears to jeopardize Medvetz's placement on the expedition. In a preview for this week's episode, Brice is shown questioning Medvetz's ability to keep up and wonders if he should be allowed to continue.

Medvetz says he also suffered from bronchitis, which is just one of the many maladies that can befall high-altitude climbers.

"I actually broke a rib cage while I was up there (from) coughing," he says, adding that it put him in jeopardy of not reaching the summit. Yet Medvetz continued pushing forward.

Medvetz describes Everest as "just rock and ice. There's no mosquitoes, there's no bugs, there's no animals. It's cold. The wind is just unbelievable. When you get up really high ... you have to push your back up against the wall of your tent to try and hold the tent still."

And harsh reality is everywhere you look.

"It's literally like another planet being up there," Medvetz says. "Bodies frozen, stepping over bodies — it's just complete chaos. People losing fingers to frostbite, people falling off the mountain."

Yet a breath later, he adds, "With all that aside, I've never felt more alive in my life ... It's like going to the ends of the Earth."

And getting there is only half the battle.

"You really haven't climbed that mountain until you get back down — the summit's only half way," he explains. "Getting down is a huge undertaking."

That's an understatement. According to Discovery Channel, fatal accidents are 80 percent more likely on descent, despite it being less physically demanding. Medvetz says that's because climbers' legs are spent by that point.

"You give everything you have — mentally, physically, spiritually — to get to the top," he explains. "And then, when you come down ... you have nothing left."

Back in South Carolina, Carol Medvetz says she was "scared to death" for her son. Unlike many of the other climbers who took advantage of access to cell phones and e-mail, Medvetz did not. "He asked me not to read anything about it, and not to watch anything on TV about it because he knew that I would be very upset over it," says his mother.

Instead, he let his video diary, which was provided by the show, speak for him.

"I got the video diary the day before Mother's Day," Carol Medvetz says, which turned out to be right before her son began his push toward the summit. Yet until she heard from him and knew he'd made it safely down Everest, she couldn't relax. "I prayed a lot," she says.

Back to Earth

One might get the impression from Medvetz's story that he's the one who can't relax. Not true, he says.

"The nice part about being single and not having any kids or pets is that you can lay on the beach in Thailand and recover for a few months," Medvetz says. "Mai Tais and the sun."

And that's exactly what he did after scaling Everest. The recuperation was needed, too, since he'd suffered what he calls a "little bit of frostbite on my finger." In actuality, Medvetz says two of his fingers and two of his toes were black and he had no feeling in them.

You might think Medvetz would be comfortable resting on his laurels. But he's already preparing to return to Everest in the spring. He's actively seeking sponsors to raise the $55,000 necessary via his Web site, www.highwaytoeverest.com. As of press time, he's collected $7,000.

Carol says she's "so proud of him I could bust."

"I give him an awful lot of credit," she adds. "He always tells me I didn't raise a quitter."

While he's one of a privileged few who have climbed Everest, seen sights most mere mortals will never see and lived to tell the tale, Medvetz also finds time to appreciate the simple things us Jersey folks, well, tend to take for granted.

"God, I can't tell you how much I miss pork roll," he says wistfully. "You can't get it out here. I miss it really bad. I'm a big fan of Taylor ham. People just don't get it ... I'm just a Jersey boy at heart."

He seems more excited about pork roll than he does about being the subject of a TV show.

"My mother's pretty excited," he concedes. "We come from a small town."

With his penchant for cursing, Medvetz figures Discovery Channel has their work cut out for them.

"I'm always getting slapped by (my) mom for my bad mouth," he says. "I'm sure there will be a lot of bleeping."

In the end, though, it all boils down to just one thing for Medvetz.

"I just want to climb Everest," he says. "I don't really care about the exposure, the TV show, the Web site I did.

"I just want to climb Everest. That's all I want to do."